Arras & Cambrai 1918: Canadian WW1 History, a Discussion with Michel Gravel

Battles of the First World War Podcast

Mike Cunha

History

4.8 • 812 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Historian Michel Gravel comes on the podcast to discuss his focus on First World War history: the efforts of Canadian soldiers in the battles between Arras and Cambrai, France in 1918.

There may be a few awkward cuts in the flow of the conversation as our internet connection was frequently unstable. Sorry about that.

Michel’s works can be found here:

https://ysec.fr/?s=Michel+Gravel&post_type=product

Michel’s GoFundMe for “La place Joseph Kaeble, VC, MM,” in Neuville-Vitasse, France:

https://gofund.me/17574db1

The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.

Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on Twitter at @WW1podcast, the Battles of the First World War Podcast page on FaceBook, and on Instagram at @WW1battlecast. Not into social media? Email me directly at [email protected]. Rate, review, and subscribe to the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The The
0:23.6	The Hey, folks. Welcome to the Battles of the First World War podcast.
0:53.3	Joining us today on the podcast is Michelle Gravel, author of several books. Hey folks, welcome to the Battles of the First World War podcast.
0:59.6	Joining us today on the podcast is Michelle Gravel, author of several books on World War I.
1:04.8	You may not have heard of him as his books have been published in France.
1:08.0	And so they are, of course, in the French language.
1:12.7	But we are here to change that today as he focuses on an area of the Western Front that does not always get a lot of attention, the Arras sector in 1918,
1:19.5	and very specifically the sector between Arras and Cambrai. So Michelle is is French-Canadian based in Ontario, Canada.
1:30.6	He has worked in construction sales since before 1995. However, Michelle visited the Somme battlefield
1:37.0	somewhat by mistake in 1984 when he was 16, and there he discovered the cemeteries to use a cliche line the rest is history but history
1:48.5	that he has been writing so michel welcome and thanks for coming on the podcast this evening
1:55.6	thank you uh pleasure to be here all right so we'll just kick into the questions so we can get to know you.
2:05.6	So if you would, would you expand a little bit on your personal history and on what exactly about the Psalm and visiting those cemeteries got you into the great war well there's two steps to my evolution uh
2:21.0	i remember um well third canadian division was at d-day on june 644 so uh when the 40th anniversary
2:30.2	i was 16 uh was on tv uh we only had TV at the time. I was glued to it. And then I thought, oh, my God, this will be the last ceremony. It's been 40 years. These guys are so old. And then I washed it. And my mother said, would you like to go see it?
2:57.3	So we, she booked, we, we, we went out in August, 1984.
3:05.7	But we decided we do a search, a roundabout route from Paris up to the Netherlands, up down the coast, to Normandy and back.
3:08.8	Being typical North Americans, we assume we'd be in the Netherlands.
3:14.3	We got into Paris at Charles de Gold in August, 1984, about 8 a.m., which is really early.
3:22.6	My dad got the car, and I, sorry, I guess we'll be in the Netherlands, like, by dinner.
3:30.2	But then we didn't realize, I didn't realize how much stuff there was to see.
	...

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